As I promised a few weeks ago, the Beta version of NirLauncher, with a package of more than 100 utilities of NirSoft, is available to download.

NirLauncher Screenshot

Before you go to the download link, it’s important that you read the following guidelines:

For now, the download link of this utilities package is a little restrictive. I only allow to download it 5 times per day for each IP address. So please don’t download this package with any ‘download accelerator’ software that open multiple connections. If you do so, the download might be failed and your IP address will be blocked from downloading this file for a few hours.
Also, the download link won’t work if you put it on other Web sites.
I’ll try to gradually reduce these restrictions as long as it won’t eat my server resources.

Antivirus False Positives – This package contains more than 100 utilities, and if you have any Antivirus on your computer, there is a very high chance that it’ll falsely detect one or more of these utilities as Virus/Trojan/Spyware/Malware or anything else.
It’s also possible that your Antivirus will simply delete some of the utilities or prevent you from running them without displaying any alert.
In any case, please don’t flood my email address with messages like “You have virus in your utilities package” or “After I extract your files, some of them are deleted” or “I double-click xyz utility and nothing happens”. All complaints about false virus alerts, utilities that cannot be executed, and disappearing files should be sent to the Antivirus companies that cause these troubles.
You are also welcomed to read my Blog post from a few months ago: Antivirus companies cause a big headache to small developers.

You might find out that some of my utilities in this package are missing. For now, to avoid from including very old utilities, my scripts that build the NirLauncher package automatically take only utilities that have been updated in the last 1000 days. Some of my very old utilities might still save the settings into the Registry, and I don’t want to include them in NirLauncher package, because this package should be fully portable.
Later, I’ll gradually check my old utilities and some of them will be possibly upgraded to be included in future releases of NirLauncher package.

Currently, the software groups (categories) in NirLauncher are not the best choice, I simply took them with automatic scripts from my main utilities page. I hope that I’ll create better software groups in future versions.

Start using NirLauncher: In order to start using NirLauncher, simply create a new folder in your USB flash drive or in any other drive, and then extract all files of the package into the new folder.
You should not extract the files into the root directory of your USB flash drive, because the package contains too much files.
After you extracted the package, simply run the NirLauncher.exe executable.

After running NirLauncher, here’s some tips for using it:

You can use F7 and F8 keys to move to the next and previous software group.

When you select a single item, the ‘Description’ and ‘Web Page URL’ become a link that you can click. Clicking the ‘Description’ opens the help file, and clicking the ‘Web Page URL’ opens the right utility Web page. If you are not pleased from this feature, you can disable it from Options->Advanced Options (set all click options to none)

If you want to view a longer description of each utility that you select, check the ‘Show Description Text’ under the options menu. However, be aware that these description texts were taken from the pad files of my utilities, and they are not always updated to the latest features of each utility.

If you want to run a utility with command-line parameters, change the current directory, and so on, the ‘Advanced Run’ is the right option that you need.

There is also a generic ‘Advanced Run’ window that affects all utilities that you execute with the standard ‘run’ option: Options -> Default Run Settings. For example, if you open the ‘Default Run Settings’ window and select the ‘Run in full screen mode’ option, all console application that you run will be opened in full screen.

If you use the x64 version of Windows, and you click on a utility that have a separated x64 version, NirLauncher automatically run the x64 executable of the utility. The x64 executable filenames in the package are in UtilityName-x64.exe format.

Warning for Windows 7/Vista users: For now, do not run NirLauncher.exe with ‘Run As Administrator’ option. It seems that using this option cause my ‘Network Password Recovery’ utility and a few others to crash lsass.exe process if you run them from NirLauncher that was executed with ‘Run As Administrator’ option. The reason for this problem is still unknown, and more research is required to fix it.
If you want to force a specific utility to run with admin permissions, simply use the ‘Run As Administrator’ option (Ctrl+M) inside NirLauncher.

Here’s a few optional tips for more advanced users. If you don’t need them, you can skip to the download link in the bottom of the post.

The package contains a file named ‘nirsoft.nlp’ (NLP = NirLauncher Package) . This file contains the list of all software groups and utilities that are displayed in NirLauncher. It’s a very simple text file, like .ini file of Windows, that you can easily view and edit with any text editor. So, although the current version of NirLauncher doesn’t support editing, you can change the software groups and utilities list displayed in NirLauncher by editing this file.

When editing the .nlp file, it’s recommended that any file that you specify will be in relative path. For example: if you want to add an executable file located in a subfolder named ‘MyPackage’ under the main launcher folder, you should specify it as ‘MyPackage\myfile.exe’ instead of ‘i:\nirsoft\MyPackage\myfile.exe’.

The ‘help’ value in .nlp file specifies that help file (.hlp or .chm). However, if the help filename has the same name of the executable (like cports.exe and cports.chm), NirLauncher will detect it automatically.

The ‘AppName’ value specifies the application name, while the ‘ShortDesc’ value specifies a short description. If you don’t specify these values, NirLauncher will take them from the version resource of the .exe file.

The ‘LongDesc’ value is the text that appeared in the yellow description box of ‘Show Description Text’ option.

NirLauncher also allows you to add additional software packages. Just for example, here’s how to add Sysinternals Suite into NirLauncher:

Extract the zip package of Sysinternals into a new folder located in the same drive of NirLauncher.

Download the sysinternals.nlp that I created for Sysinternals Suite, and save it into the same folder with all Sysinternals files.

Drag this sysinternals.nlp into the main window of NirLauncher. You can also use the “Add Software Package” from the Launcher menu.

If you did it right, you should now see the Sysinternals package in the main window of NirLauncher. You can switch between the packages by using F3 and F4 keys.

You may notice that full description text and Web Page URL are empty. This is because they are not filled in the sysinternals.nlp that I created.
However, the ‘Open Web Page’ option (Ctrl+W) will still work properly for most of the SysInternals utilities even without the URL information, thanks to the “I’m feeling lucky” feature of Google. When there is no URL, I simply send the utility name to Google, and the first page in the search result is automatically opened.

1. How about putting all utilities in a subdir, and leaving only the NirLauncher.exe in the root of the download, just to make it easier to get to… I guess we could do this ourselves by editing your NLP file… haven’t yet tried.

2. How about *either* an ALL UTILITIES category/button, OR make the FIND/SEARCH function work for any utility in any category. I guess we could also do this with the NLP file?

For anyone with download / corrupt ZIP troubles I’m sure you already knew (or at least read the article) to disable your anti-virus software which loves to detect false positives in legitimate NirSoft products, but not running anti-virus on my personal machine I still had the same issue and was confused for a minute … until I realized I’m running behind an Untangle server using ClamWin A/V, which until recently, I had never noticed to claim a false positive in NirSoft products (heck it never detects real viruses either) but anyway it throws false positives on Nirsoft stuff now :\

Ron says:

Mark says:

@ Foolish Tech

#1, I did exactly that, put all of the files except the main executable in a sub directory, called “files”. Then I did a find and replace in the .nlp file, replacing all of the “exe=” and help=” entries with “exe=files\” and “help=files” respectively, and it works nicely. I mainly did it to add it to the Portable Apps Suite.

Joe says:

RscueGuy says:

@Mike from October 5th.

In your comment, you said “Download the sysinternals.nlp just opens the file in the browser instead of letting you to download.”

In Firefox, Right mouse click on ‘sysinternals.nlp’ and choose “Save Link As” and choose a destination for the file.
In Internet Exploder, right click on ‘sysinternals.nlp’ and choose “Save Target As” and choose a destination for the file.

~ Vera says:

Dear Nir Sofer
great big thanks to you 🙂 . Again you supply us with another brilliant tool and the freedom to customize it to any personal favour.

As already mentioned by others I found it’s possible to call the helps and tools out of subfolders just editing the NLP (help=help/… , exe=group1/…). This brings big relief to the main folder and a clear structure. (Don’t forget all these config and lang-inis that will be added gradually.)
Surplus your launcher already creates it’s own language-ini on command (.. / savelangfile) and the button-labels may easily be adjusted via NLP-file.

By the way: the ”pcanypass.exe” is not integrated via nlp-file yet.
Suggestion: maybe a 7zip download alternative may solve the above mentioned problems.

I wonder if, as I have not tried it yet, I can put a Shortcut at the top of my FlashDrive that points to the “NirLauncher.exe” and effectively achieve a way of launching the launcher without editing the “NLP” file.

One other thing, I think that there are ways to set an external / removable drive to that when it is loaded a program is launched, again, I have not tried yet. This might be another way to do what we want, e.g. a Simple/Automatic way or running NirLauncher.exe

andrew says:

Yair says:

Hi Nir, Great Launcher.

I decided to contribute a little as well.

Things I’ve done:
1. I manually added “Web Page URL” to all Sysinternal Utilities in my nlp. (Although, most of Google’s “feeling lucky” references were precise anyway).
Feel free to use it in your future releases.
(Edited nlp Download links are at the end of this post)

2. I Edited nlp files that support Foolish Tech’s & Mike Liveright’s “utilities in subdirectory” idea.
For the NirLauncher package in subdirectory:
Place all files (execpt NirLauncher.exe and my edited nirsoft.nlp file) in a subdirectory called “NirLauncherPackage”.
For the Sysinternal Utilities in subdirectory:
Place all files (execpt NirLauncher.exe and my edited sysinternals.nlp file) in a subdirectory called “SysinternalsSuite”.

3. Additionally, I created a merged nlp file that contains both “NirLauncherPackage” and “SysinternalsSuite” in a single combined Package:http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/3470/screenshotyt.png
This seemed to me like the most elegant solution (more convenient then switch between them with F3 and F4 keys).
Place each package in a subdirectory (except NirLauncher.exe and my NirsoftSysinternals.nlp file) and name the subdirectories “NirLauncherPackage” and “SysinternalsSuite” (respectively).
Using this method, in the future, you can add any other subdirectory you want, to keep your own portable programs sorted by categories.
Make sure you assign the appropriate Path inside the nlp (e.g. “exe=SubDir\File.exe”).

#Bugs found (major to minor):

1. Sysinternal’s “Console applications” don’t seem to run in cmd at all. It gives the following path syntax error:
“‘C:\Users\Administrator\Desktop\NirLauncher’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”

2. Running MessenPass.exe in windows 7 reboots the computer, even when running it without ‘Run As Administrator’ option (maybe it’s related to the lsass.exe process crash Bug you mentioned).

3. When long group names are given, Group Buttons don’t expand, resulting in the group name being cut off.

peter says:

Howard says:

JD says:

I like the idea of bundled utils in a subdir, but SysInternals (SI) probably should be located more flexibly with either an “Add Folder” like WMP, iTunes, etc. or an option box with a button to find the location, because SI is likely to already have an established location for direct use and you probably don’t want to force relocation/indirection or duplication when users want to use SI directly.
Very nice util set!

Lethimenter says:

LOVE IT! This is SO cool!!! This does not deserve to be in the hands of those reporting false positives. Those who trust their antivirus software over Nirsoft are absolute fools and will eventually come back to Nirsoft realizing all Nirsoft software is clean, and they won’t find utilities to do what they need elsewhere…

Keith S. says:

Outstanding tool. It’s always great to have these suites with hundreds of utilities, but I find them almost useless without some kind of indexing/launcher tool. Kudos.

A few suggestions for the creator AND for other users:

1) I agree with the need for a find/search button to locate tools regardless of their group.

2) Note that it’s not always A/V software that causes problems; usually it’s other security software by those same vendors (e.g.: Symantec Protection Agent). In that case, what you are seeing are NOT false positives on virus detections, but specific security restriction policies kicking in and prohibiting those types of programs from being run.

If you can’t turn off your security software, you won’t be able to unzip, copy, or run certain executables. But for users whose security software is particularly stealthy and actually looks inside zip files and makes changes on the fly (as I’ve seen some do from the comments above), the best solution is to ask someone to create an encrypted zip file and download that instead. You still won’t be able to work with the contents once unencrypted, but you can copy the zip file untouched to an external drive, then mess with it on some other machine. (This assumes you can’t just download it directly from some other machine.)

So, nirsoft, you may want to consider hosting a copy of the zip file with some very trivial encryption as well. (Of course, you would have to provide the password along with the download link.)

HeinzBeinz says:

shaji han says:

luckyluc78 says:

Nice tools.Before this, I wrote a tool to download all your tools but your NirLauncher is better.
Just a remark: I often use strun.exe which is more powerfull than whatinstartup.exe but it is not in NirLauncher . Why?

Zrainer says:

Edu says:

jcym says:

luckyluc78, perhaps because, like it says on strun’s page, it is obsolete, hasn’t been touched since 2004 and to use whatinstartup instead 🙂

False Positives:

For those using Avira AV, you can tell Avira to ignore any folders and/or individual applications you wish. When I used to use Avira I used to simply tell it to ignore my Nirsoft folder and its contents as well as other known safe folders and applications because of constant problems with false positives. In Avira AV there are two sections in settings or options, Scanner and Guard, that need to have your selected ignored folders/applications entered.

Note, if entering a folder to be ignored the path name must end with a backslash or Avira assumes you meant a file name rather than a folder name. E.g. C:\Program Files\Nirsoft would assume a file named Nirsoft located in the C:\Program Files folder while C:\Program Files\Nirsoft\ would assume a folder named Nirsoft and it contents located in C:\Program Files

If you don’t want to do that you could simply designate one folder for any downloads that trigger false positives and only download into that folder what you know is safe. As long as you then do all the work on the Nirlauncher zip from inside that folder it shouldn’t trigger Avira.

Either technique should work with most AV and security software though you might have to look around for the appropriate setting in other packages. AVG 7 (the last AVG version I used) used to have that option, though I can’t remember its settings layout anymore, so I would be surprised if AVG 8 doesn’t have it also, as does the new MS Security Essentials AV under Settings/Exclude Files and Locations.

Euler says:

bob says:

cant seem to get Disk2vhd to show up on under SysInternals. It was included on the Sysinternals Zip file but not on the provided nlp file. I thought I mad ethe correct additions to the nlp file, but nothing. Anyone have an idea on how to get Disk2Vhd to show up?

Bob says:

OK, my bad, I used the wrong Group number!
But If I create my own nlp file and put the exe into the NirLauncher folder, it trues to run it as a command line file rather than a GUI program. How can I get a portable exe file to run as a GUI?

Billy says:

Bob says:

To all who are having problems unzipping the files:

Even though you disable your antvirus or malware product, you may still have services running in the background. In this case, you should go into your Task Manager and turn off any service that relates to those programs. In my case, I had a couple services still running, once disabled I was able to unzip!

Billy says:

jcym says:

Billy and others who are wondering whether they might have a corrupt zip file, if you haven’t already, then check using the MD5/SHA1 checksums included just below the download link for Nirlauncher on this page. If it checks OK then the zip file isn’t corrupt and the problem lies elsewhere.

For those wanting a suitable MD5/SHA1 checking program, Nirsoft’s own HashMyFiles will do the job.

jcym says:

bob: I just added disk2vhd.exe to the sysinternals.nlp and it worked fine.

What I did:
under [General] change

SoftwareCount=69 to SoftwareCount=70

(Note: The first program in the .nlp is Software=0 so SoftwareCount will always be 1 more than the Software number of the last item in the .nlp.)

and added;

[Software69]
exe=disk2vhd.exe
group=2

at the bottom of the .nlp file and it worked properly opening with the expected GUI.

For anyone adding anything to an nlp file while NirLauncher is running, as I just did with the Sysinternals.nlp without thinking when adding disk2vhd.exe, if you have entered everything correctly and saved the .nlp file then a F5 (Refresh) will bring it up in the correct NirLauncher window. I.e. the Sysinternal Suite GUI window in the above example.

Bob says:

Thanks JCYM,

I got disk2vhd resolvec. But I created a new.nlp file and added a couple portable .exe files. When launching them from Nirlauncher, it tries to open them in DOS. I checked the properties and it shows as Console. Do you know how I can change that so it runs as GUI instead?

jcym says:

Bob, I haven’t added anything but Sysinternals to the nirlaucnher as my other utes are in linked together in a separate launcher and I prefer to keep it that way.

However, if you look in the folder containing Nirlauncher.exe you will see a file named Nirlauncher.cfg. If you open this in Notepad or another text editor you will see separate sections for each .nlp. E.g. in mine I have

[Package0]
filename=nirsoft.nlp

[DefaultAdvancedRunOptionsUI]
x
x
x

[Pacakge1]
filename=Sysinternals.nlp
x

I would copy everything from [DefaultAdvancedRunOptionsUI] to the end of the Nirsoft section and paste it under

filename=’yournewpackage’.nlp

where ‘yournewpackage’ is the name of the .nlp you used for your new package and see if it makes any difference. When I have time over the weekend I’ll play around a bit and add a new made up package to the launcher to see if I get the same problem as you.

At worst you will only waste a few minutes. Though do make a backup of the .cfg file to make it easy to revert in case of problems 🙂 BTW, do let us know if it works or not.

hypa77 says:

[Re: Foolish Tech, Point 1.] I also would prefer a subdir for *each app*, because actually all readme.txt files are missing 🙁 Obviously in a flat dir structure (all apps in one dir) the readmes would have to be renamed to %appname%_readme.txt, which is alot of extra work, dl the individual readmes is extra work too, so please include them, possibly with apps in subdirs. I love readme.txt!

Acksys says:

Bassim says:

Is there a way to automatically run certain utilities once NirLauncher starts? I have got all the command-line parameters setup for my favourite utilities, but sadly i have to run them one by one. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

hypa77 Says:
[Re: Foolish Tech, Point 1.] I also would prefer a subdir for *each app*, because actually all readme.txt files are missing Obviously in a flat dir structure (all apps in one dir) the readmes would have to be renamed to %appname%_readme.txt, which is alot of extra work, dl the individual readmes is extra work too, so please include them, possibly with apps in subdirs. I love readme.txt!

Hypa77, If you still want the readme.txt files renamed like that, I dug up this batch for you. I wrote it long ago to unzip and rename the readme.txt to exactly that, %appname%_readme.txt — actually I used the name of the zip file, but they were always the same as the exe name. It was part of a larger batch that did a bunch of other stuff, but I just ripped out the important code you’ll need, and I wrote instructions in the top comments for you, so it should work just fine.

Hypa77, I think most of the newer version sysinternals utilities have a /accepteula or similar switch you can pass to the app on the command line.

Alternately, and easily, you can fire up all the utils, accept the eula. Then, fire up regedit, goto the HKCU\Sysinternals key, and export that as a .reg file. Just run that regfile on any computer you later want to use the utilities on, and bam no eula prompt. This is also useful if you want to define custom app settings and views inside the programs and always have the settings the way you like them when you take the apps with you on a new system.

When you’re done with using the utilities on that system, simply delete that registry key, which you can do by importing another 2 line .reg file, like:

(the minus sign between the [ and HKEY will delete the key instead of add it.)

But I really don’t think it should be an issue to leave a few reg settings on a machine. It’s really isn’t hurting anything; I used to think like you, and preferred portability to be TRUE portability, but as someone who occasionally writes some custom apps, I often swing back and forth sometimes using the old .INI method and other times leaving settings in the registry, for a LOT of various reaons I won’t bother to discuss here.

Hank says:

Great set of utilities. I put everything into a NirSoft directory and changed/added to your nirsoft.nlp file. I also added a autorun.inf to the CD root to load your application when the CD is loaded.
Thanks for all your work on this application

Werner Barthelmeus says:

Great!! I just wonder what´s the difference to the WSCC (Windows System Control Center from http://www.kls-soft.com)? WSCC is covering exactly the same (NirSoft+Sysinternals) and has a search function. I have been using WSCC for quite some time, so now I´m going to compare with this one. Hopefully, Your program will include an automatic updater once it´s out of beta. Anyway, Your utilities are just great + priceless (-:)).

Merlin says:

Eddie says:

Great set! Avira’s false positive drove me mad too. I contacted them via email. And they asked me to upload the package for their analysis. They promise to fix this issue in the next vdf update when they get confirmed.

I have fallen in love with NirLauncher. With all the fancy-pants launchers, docks and the like, it is refreshing to see a great launcher that features functionality, and organization over eye candy. The thing I like the most is that is a glance you have your apps categorized into function, this is helpful for big packages (like NirSoft), reminding the user what each app is for. It’s also helpful in finding the right app for every situation. The description column helps even more by adding a second layer of specificity.

As has been stated, it would be advantageous to have a GUI based tool to create new packages. The syntax for making new packages by hand is easy enough but can be pretty tedious for larger group off apps.

cspot says:

thanks for this package, and for all this lightweight and usable tools.

for me the true value of the launcher is to get all tools at once (so far I saw no complete download collection and picking them up individually is alot of work).

an extra value (i.e. feature request) would be to keep my nirsoft tools up to date (check the version of each tool, if there is an update, download according zip file and extract it to update the collection. adding new tools should also be part of this procedure.)

optionally the laucher could be initially “empty”, downloading tools on demand. (the update would check only selected tools, possilby notify about new tools avaliable)

rover3500 says:

rover3500 says:

Yigal do u not read anything b4 u download.Because of the nature of a lot of these apps,u will get false positives from any anti virus.Unless these apps have been added as exceptions,all av’s will tell u there is something ‘hacky’ about them.

ch says:

Jeff says:

It’s not possible to download this file when NOD32 Version 4 is enabled in Windows XP SP2 with all updates. Even if I temporarily disable real-time protection, the download is still monitored by the software, which prevents writing to disk. This activity is visible as high CPU activity by the EKRN.exe process (identified as ESET Service) after the IE download monitor shows 99% completion. The download never completes, and IE displayes an error message: “Internet Explorer cannot download nirsoft_package_beta_100.zip. The connection with the server was reset.”

Chris says:

Great piece of work, many thanks for tal the hard effort into bringing us this. Also, Yigal, you will get false positives from your antivirus software with this type of utility, but don’t worry, its not infected with any viruses, honest!

David Lynch says:

Thanks, Nir.
I have been using your utilities or some time and they have helped me on a lot of occasions. Massive thanks for releasing this utility aggregator.
I have found a workaround for the false positives by adapting your utilities for use in the Windows Preinstalation Environment / BartPE / WinRE.
Again, thanks a lot for your hard work.